Wife, baker, fitness-wannabe, crafter, lover of the little things

Wilton Cake Decorating Class: Buttercream Skills Day 2

June 17, 2017

Last Sunday, my mom and I headed back to JoAnn’s for part two of our Wilton decorating class. This time we were asked to come prepared with two baked cakes, filling of our choice, and thin/medium/stiff homemade colored icing. Our class kit included a written guide for how to make homemade Wilton buttercream. The thing that sets Wilton’s frosting apart is that it “crusts” as it dries, which makes the decorating process a lot easier so decorations aren’t running together and looking messy.

When we arrived at the class, we took out our practice boards again and went over some new piping designs, as well as practiced our cake handwriting. Then, our instructor taught us how to properly transfer our baked cakes to a cake board, how to fill them, and how to smooth out the top coat of icing. That in itself was a big help because I always wondered how bakers on TV were able to get buttercream to smooth out so nicely! Next, we picked up our “flower nails” (little plastic props to make buttercream flowers on) and attempted to make a collection of different flowers. I had NO IDEA how hard it would be to make flowers. Of course, our instructor made it look easy, but I had the worst time trying to reproduce what she was doing. As you’ll see from my finished product, later on, I definitely need to keep working on my flowers. Mom had a little more luck because she took Wilton classes previously and had some experience with the designs. Finally, we placed our cake boards on turntables and were told to start decorating our cakes! We were allowed to create whatever we wanted as long as we implemented some of the things we learned in class. I am a slow worker, so my big plans for my cake didn’t work out when I had to rush through my decorating in under a half hour! But that’s okay because now I can practice at home whenever I want! I’m looking forward to the next time I get to create a cake for family or friends.

Now onto the finished products…. I had plans to cover my cake in sunflowers, but only had time to crank out two “hmm-those-kinda-look-like-flowers” sunflowers, Anyways, you get the idea. Mom, on the other hand, made a birthday cake for my sister (happy birthday, Cole!) and worked a lot faster than I did to get all of hers done!